IRELAND— ITS SOCIAL STATE. 155 



the accounts of such things by old people who have 

 been eye-witnesses, that makes them very different 

 from hearsay second-hand stories. 



It is not many years since, taking shelter in a 

 cabia from a shower, an old woman told me all that 

 happened during the rebellion of 1798 in my own 

 neighbourhood. Chancing to repeat what she had 

 told me to a friend, a General Officer of Artillery 

 from another district, he answered, " Eemember it ? 

 why, I was out, and helping to put the rebellion 

 down." It appeared that his father, having fought 

 manfully as a Eoyalist in South Carolina during 

 the American Eevolution, and lost in it wife and 

 child and all that he had there, when the rebellion 

 of '98 broke out, was put in command of a camp 

 of volunteers, etc., twelve miles from his home in 

 Ireland. My friend was twelve years old, and when 

 his father started for his command, his mother hid 

 the boy's shoes, to prevent his following. When his 

 father got up next morning, there was the boy with- 

 out shoes in the corner of the tent. So he was 

 allowed to stay and go through it. 



Soon after, talking over the subject with an old 

 poor-law guardian, he said, "Oh, I remember all about 

 it. I was a boy and lay behind the ditch, to see it 

 all, when there was the fighting at the cross above." 



This fighting is known in history as the Battle of 

 Ballinascarthy, which I well recollect to have heard 

 of often in childhood, because our best tenant had 



